


And If Your Glass Heart Should Crack

by DiscoNight



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Chris POV, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Male Friendship, Panic Attacks, References to Drugs, References to Sex, Some Fluff, Some UST if you squint, Yakuza, maybe? - Freeform, mostly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 19:46:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9563696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscoNight/pseuds/DiscoNight
Summary: Chris sometimes feels as though he's the only one who can see how broken Isak Valtersen is.  And so he attempts to piece him back together, even when it feels hopeless.A prequel fic to All That You Can't Leave Behind, but this should be perfectly understandable (and hopefully enjoyable?) to anyone who hasn't tackled that monster. :-)





	

**Author's Note:**

> So. I have a few chapters left to go of ATYCLB and I just wanted to pause and reflect on how far Isak has come. And also, I wanted to write more Chris. So I wrote a prequel fic, filling in some of the gaps of how Chris supported Isak through a difficult time in his life.
> 
> This was going to be a fairly quick one-shot and then it evolved into a 13k one-shot. :-/ It's very much a friendship fic but with some weird sexual energy in places due to the things Isak has been through and the way he sees himself.
> 
> For those who haven't read ATYCLB: This takes place after S1 and during S2, with a jump forward to S3 at the end. It's really not necessary to read the longer fic, at all, but if you are perhaps wondering why Isak makes some of the decisions he does, I'd recommend it.
> 
> Trigger Warnings: Some attempted non-con at the start (non explicit), some general references to non-con (again, non explicit) and some upsetting use of sexual language.

There was no gradual process that preceded Chris’s strange relationship with Isak Valtersen.  One day Isak was nothing more to him than a sweet-faced first year he’d seen with Eva a few times, the next he was a project: a boy made from glass who Chris felt compelled to stick back together, piece by piece, until Isak resembled something whole again.

Normally he would have turned a blind eye.  Everybody else seemed to look straight through Isak - or simply saw what they wanted to when they looked at him - so Chris wondered why he had to be any different. 

But then, he already knew the answer to that.  It was because he’d first encountered Isak from an angle where the glass shimmered darkly and was impossible to ignore.  The night of Ida Jacobsen’s party.

Chris had arrived at that party the usual way: drunk already from the pre-game, flanked by the Penetrators (minus William who was pissing around being moody somewhere.)  They came through the back door to the house, as Seb shoved him forward and said, “Not the only back entrance you’ll come through tonight.”  Chris ran his fingers through his hair, pushing his fringe back from his face, and grinned at him.

On their way they passed Jonas Vasquez, hanging out with another guy shrouded in shadow; it too dark to make him out from here. The two of them lounged on the patio furniture despite the freezing weather, cold even for February.  They were out here smoking weed and Chris inhaled it deeply as they approached.

Jonas stood up as soon as he saw them coming and pulled a disgusted expression; he muttered something to his friend about the party being over and stormed to the back gate before Chris had even had a  _ chance _ to wind him up.

Well, that was no fun.

Chris tended to rate parties on arrival using the following categories: needs more alcohol, needs more people, needs more grinding, just about right.  This one straddled the last two.  There were plenty of people - plenty of  _ drunk _ people - but not enough grinding going on.  In fact, the atmosphere was decidedly unsexy right now; so much so that a bunch of first years in the corner were singing fucking  _ pop _ songs over the far-too-restrained volume of the stereo.

Isak sat in the centre of that group, his arm held awkwardly around a curvy blonde girl as he smiled at her infectiously and serenaded her terribly.  It was…  _ kind of cute _ , if Chris was being brutally honestly.  Maybe the kid actually had some game.

But then Seb crashed over to the stereo, flicked through the iphone screen and brought up a drum and bass playlist.  He turned the volume up to somewhere just below deafening and then held up a bottle of vanilla flavoured vodka.

“Free shots for the ladies!”

Chris smiled in approval and headed to the kitchen to make his own drink.

He was pouring a liberal amount of whisky into his cup when Ida came rushing over to him a few moments later.  She was covering her ears in exaggeration.

“Chris, tell Seb it’s too loud!”

“Don’t worry, you won’t hear it soon,” he assured her, turning to look at her with an appraising gaze up and down her body.

“Really?”

“Really.  Soon you’ll be moaning too loudly to hear anything at all.”

She blushed, rolled her eyes, and then leaned towards him as he pulled her in for a kiss.  He’d never hooked up with her before but he’d heard she only did anal because she was saving her virginity for her husband and, honestly, that kind of practical approach to sex made Chris more than a little intrigued to find out how militant she’d be in the bedroom.

She kissed him like she was starving for contact, which was a good start, and they spent a few minutes propped against the counter, her hands in his hair and his at her arse.  He squeezed it and growled into her mouth and she gasped in excitement.

“Bedroom?” he pulled away for a split second to ask.  She nodded as they resumed the kiss, and they spent another few minutes teasing each other with the promise of what was to come.

And then a few of the Penetrators came crashing into the kitchen, whooping approvingly at the show.  At this point she really did move away, taking his hand and pulling him towards the door.  Julian grinned at him and Chris saluted back before letting Ida lead him back through the party, down the hall to a bedroom tucked at the back of the house.

The door was open when they got there, and she stopped in her tracks when she looked through.  She glanced back at him, confused, and he craned his neck to see what the hold up was.

Isak, the first year he’d seen on his way in, was leaning against the wall, his blonde hair falling into his eyes as he took a couple of quick, frantic breaths.  There was someone in there with him - an older guy who Chris didn’t recognise - and he was pressing himself into Isak’s personal space as the boy turned his head to the side, his eyes flitting around the room.

Ida opened the door wider in order to say something but quickly Chris held his hand out to her to stop her.  He shook his head.  For some reason he didn’t feel comfortable interrupting this scene just yet; mostly because he hadn’t figured out what was happening.  “Go,” he mouthed at her.  She was confused, her face expressing her annoyance, but he flashed a reassuring smile at her.  “It’s fine,” he whispered.

She left to go back into the party and he turned his head back to watch.  The guy’s hands were on Isak’s shoulders in what could have been a comforting gesture; Chris smiled for a moment, amused that this skinny blonde kid had the audacity to hook up with another guy when his girlfriend was only a couple of rooms over.  

He was going to leave, filing away the information for a more useful time, when he heard the guy say, “That was kind of slutty of you out there.  Kissing that girl in front of me.”  Something about the slow drawl of his voice struck Chris as singularly unkind and it made him pause.  “But you’re my little slut, aren’t you? So I should expect that from you.”

Instead of pushing him away or telling him to fuck off, Isak just nodded.

“Little slut face Isak.  Look at you.  Just  _ asking _ for it.”  His hands were in Isak’s hair, gently stroking his fringe away; the gesture were a complete mockery when contrasted with the words he was using.  His lips were close to Isak’s; Chris saw his eyes fall on Isak’s mouth and then heard him chuckle.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”  He grabbed Isak’s wrist suddenly; Isak let out a gasp and then hitched his breath as the guy brought his hand down to rub against his hardness straining through his jeans.  “Look, slut face, you’ve got me hard.”

It wasn’t some sort of fucked up sex game.  Chris could  _ see _ the sheer terror in Isak’s eyes.  And then Chris held a hand to his mouth, his body shuddering in disgust, as Isak apologised, the tears beginning to spill down his face.

Chris slammed open the door in order to make his presence known.  And immediately a switch seemed to flick in Isak’s tormentor: he turned to Chris with an easy smile on his face, displaying no sign of being rattled at this interruption.

“Hey, man.  We’re kind of busy.”

Isak stared at the floor, wiping frantically at his tears.  Chris tried to catch his eye but the blonde boy just looked down mutely.  Finally, Chris looked back at the older guy.

“Do… do you two know each other?” the man asked.  He looked to be in his early twenties; he had olive skin and spaced out eyes and stank of being up to no good.  Chris simply stared at him, not giving him the satisfaction of answering.

“Okay, well…” The man glanced back at Isak.  “I’ll call you, Issy.”

Chris saw Isak flinch at that.  He watched the man disappear through the door and trample down the hallway: he craned his head further to see the front door to the house opening and closing.

“It’s okay, he’s gone,” Chris said.  Isak looked at him for a moment with wide, frightened eyes and then dropped his head again.  

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I’ll go now.  I’m -”

He tried to get past Chris but there wasn’t much room between the bed and the wall and Chris turned his body to stop him leaving.

“Hey, just… wait a second.  I said,  _ hey _ ,” he said, raising his voice slightly as Isak tried to get past him without touching him.  Isak flinched as he raised his voice and Chris tried to reel himself back in.  He was disturbed at what he’d just seen and needed to make some sort of sense of it, but that didn’t mean he needed to be a dick about it.  “Just talk to me a moment, Isak.  It is Isak, isn’t it?  You’re friends with Jonas and Eva?”

Isak glanced up at him and nodded quickly.  The boy was all small shoulders and gasping breaths and penitent demeanour.  Chris felt something caustic twist inside of him when he thought about how fucked up you’d have to be to hurt someone like this.

“Are you okay?  Can you tell me what just happened?  Did you know that guy?” 

“Yes,” Isak said quickly.  “I know him.  It’s fine.”

“That… that wasn’t  _ fine _ ,” Chris said, a hollow laugh to his words.  Isak turned his back to him, facing the wall he’d been pressed against moments previously, and Chris heard him take a few breaths inwards, just as he’d done when Chris had first seen him in here.  But this time he didn’t stop.  He began to clutch his stomach, his chest rising and dropping rapidly as he tried to suck in air.  When Chris went to touch him, the breathing became worse.

He understood what was happening.  He’d seen his older sister go through enough of these to recognise when someone was having a panic attack.  Of course, it was  _ easy _ with his sister.  She trusted him to help her.  This kid knew nothing about him, other than the reputation that preceded him.  

Everyone knew about  _ Penetrator Chris _ , and Chris liked that just fine, most of the time.  Now, though, he wished he was someone the kid wanted to see.  Someone he trusted, like Jonas.

_ Suck it up, douchebag.  You made Jonas leave and now you’re here instead _ .

“Isak?  Can you… I’m going to touch you, just to turn you slightly, okay?  Just… look at me, okay?”

He placed his hands on the tops of Isak’s hands and guided him gently so they were facing one another.  Isak was still breathing too fast; his gait was now unsteady and he looked a couple of moments away from passing out altogether.

“We’re going to breathe together, okay?  In and out.  Trust me, I know what I’m doing.  Can you… can you breathe with me now?”

Isak looked at him imploringly, his hazel eyes bright with fear, and he nodded.

“Right.  Okay.  Three… two… one… breathe.  That’s it.  In through your nose, out through your mouth.  One big breath.  Okay.  Good.”  Isak followed his instructions and Chris smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way.  “Okay, again.  Three… two… one…. Breathe.”

Isak breathed again with him.

“And a third time.  Three… two… one… breathe.”

And again.

“You’re doing really well.  Look at you, knowing how to breathe in and out.  And they say first years are dumb, huh?” he joked.  Isak didn’t smile but the breathing didn’t get worse, either, so he took that as a victory.

“Okay, we’re going to sit down here…” Chris said, bringing him to the end of the bed and pressing him down by the shoulders before taking a seat next to him,  “and… look, I want you to focus on this room.  I want you to count how many blue things you can see in it.  Come on, first year.  Convince me you know how to count to ten.”  He pointed at a picture of a harbour, boats lined up on the calm water.  “There’s one.  Can you see another?”

Isak looked around the room, his eyes still alert with fear, but he nodded at a lampshade.  “Two,” he managed through one painful, laboured breath.

“Good.  What’s next?  Come on, third time lucky.”

They didn’t make it to ten.  By six they’d run out of items and Isak’s breathing was a stable pace again, though still loud enough to let Chris know he wasn’t out of the woods yet.  They listened for a few moments to the music from the party pounding insistently through the walls, the faraway noise of laughter just about audible.

“Sorry,” Isak said, eventually.  Chris looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

“What for?”

“I’m… you shouldn’t be… you should go back out there.  I’m… I’m going anyway.”

“I don’t mind.”  It would have been easy to crack a sarcastic joke in that moment:  _ why would I want to be out there partying when I can be in here helping some first year I don’t know through a panic attack?  _ That sort of thing.  But he got the impression Isak would take it more literally than he’d intended and so he just left it at that reassurance.

Not that Isak believed him anyway.  He stood up on shaky feet and looked to the door and then back to Chris (though still not meeting his eye) as if he needed permission to leave.  Chris stood up with him.

“How are you getting home?”

“Oh, it’s… it’s fine.  I’m going to walk to the bus stop.”

“No, you’re not,” Chris said, imagining that guy still out there, with the words he’d used and the way he’d used them, and the way the boy in front of him had shattered into pieces as he’d done so.  “At least not on your own.”

“No… I’ll… I’ll go find Jonas.  He’ll come with me.”

“Jonas has gone,” Chris said, somewhat guiltily.  Isak seemed to deflate even more at that. “What about your girlfriend?  Sara, isn’t it?”

Isak shook his head and Chris decided not to go down  _ that _ particular avenue.

“Well, look, I’m not really feeling the vibe here, anyway.  It’s all a bit tame, for my liking.  I’m just going to get an early night, I think.  I’ll walk you to the bus stop, okay?”

Isak looked at him.  “You don’t… honestly, you don’t have to do.  I’m fine.  I’m sorry for doing this.”

“That’s, like, the third time you’ve apologised to me since I’ve been in this room.  It really isn’t necessary.”

He looked at Isak, but Isak’s eyes were focused back on the floor again.

“Come on,” he said gruffly.  “I could do with the fresh air.”

 

***

 

And as simply as that, Isak became a part of his life. Chris found himself looking for him every day in school; if a day passed without seeing him, he worried.  Most of the time, though, Isak was easy to spot: he was popular enough amongst the first years and tended to hang out in the common room or out in the school grounds.  Sometimes he was with Sara; more often than not he was with Jonas.  

He never really looked like the Isak that he’d seen at the party, though he was still baby-faced, kind of shy looking, slightly more awkward than the others he hung around with. He was usually laughing or talking animatedly.  The kind of first year Chris wouldn’t have given a second glance in a normal situation.  But none of this felt normal.

When he’d walked Isak to the bus stop, the night of the party, the kid was completely silent, staring vacantly ahead as though he was used to wandering through life without taking anything in.  Chris had tried to engage him a couple of times in conversation but they were at an impasse: he knew next to nothing about Isak, and couldn’t discuss anything happening in the present moment without it likely bringing on another panic attack.

The most he got out of him was his bus number, which was the opposite direction to the one Chris needed.  Predictably, Chris’s bus was the first to turn up.  He glanced at the group of guys waiting for the bus into the city centre, saw the way Isak shifted uncomfortably when they laughed loudly, and then checked his watch.  He sighed, watched the bus pull away, and continued to wait.  

Isak’s bus finally arrived, over twenty minutes later.  Chris considered his options as it pulled up, before deciding to jump on with Isak.

“You need this one?” Isak asked him, surprised.  It was pretty much the first thing he’d said without prompting all night.  Chris nodded, scanning the map for the stops.

He ended up getting off on the stop after Isak, catching the one going in the opposite direction, and finally boarding the one he needed for home.  It took him almost an hour and a half in total and he was beyond pissed off when he got in, though not at Isak himself, just at the shittiness of this night in general.

When he checked his phone he saw numerous messages from his friends asking where he’d gone, and one sent through Facebook from Isak Valtersen.

_ Thanks. I x _

 

***

 

Chris had immediately sent a friend request but two weeks later, Isak still hadn’t accepted it.   _ Not _ that Chris cared, of course.  It was just… he was worried.  He wondered if Isak had told anyone about what had happened at the party.  Surely he’d shared it with  _ someone _ ?

But when he saw that smiling, laughing, talkative kid, he saw something else, or rather, he  _ didn’t _ see something that should have been evident: a light in his eyes that most people had when they were happy and content, in the way Isak obstinately pretended to be.

_ There _ , he’d said it to himself.  Isak was pretending.  And it seemed to Chris that nobody could see it apart from him.

One day, after they’d passed each other in the corridor, with no acknowledgement, he found himself following Isak out of the school.  He stopped as Isak chatted with a few friends huddled together to protect themselves from the bracing winds, feeling weird about this blatant act of stalking, and then resumed following him until he was sure nobody from the school would see them.

He didn’t know if the need for secrecy was for Isak’s benefit or his own.

“Hey,” he said, calling to him.  Isak turned around and straightened up suddenly, his eyes lowering.  He was dressed in a white hoodie which he’d pulled up to cover his blonde curls from the wind.  His hands were in his pockets as Chris approached.  He pretty much looked like a baby angel and Chris felt himself soften despite himself.

“I just-” Chris stopped for a moment, wondering what he was supposed to say.   _ Why didn’t you add me back on Facebook _ ?  Right, because that didn’t sound ridiculous.

“I just wanted to check everything was okay?”

Isak looked at him from under long lashes.  Chris had to admit this kid was pretty, which would normally have pissed him off as he didn’t like competition.  On Isak, though, it only made Chris feel more concerned about him.

“I’m fine.  Why?”

“Um… do you not remember what happened the last time we were together?”

Isak looked at him in confusion and Chris wondered for a moment whether he really had forgotten.

“Have you at least  _ talked _ to someone?  Jonas, maybe?  Should I -”

He stopped abruptly when Isak stumbled back as though he’d been slapped and began to shake his head frantically.

“You can’t tell him.  Please.   _ Please _ , Chris?”

It was the first time Isak had said his name.  Chris nodded dumbly, ready to agree to anything if it meant not putting Isak through the ordeal of another panic attack.

“He can’t know,” Isak said frantically, not even registering that Chris had already agreed.

Chris took a deep breath, took hold of the boy’s small shoulders, and held him firmly.  “Isak.   _ Isak _ , listen to me, okay?  I’m not going to tell Jonas.  I’m not going to tell anyone if you don’t want me to.  Okay?”

Isak swayed slightly on his feet and Chris found himself gripping more tightly to support him.  Isak squirmed slightly, like a trapped and frightened animal who didn’t recognise when someone was attempting to help it.  But he didn’t push back or try to get away, and Chris was reminded of how he’d been at Ida’s party: the lack of awareness that he could use physical struggle as a method of protestation.

He put his hands down to his side, feeling like shit.

“Okay,” he said, nodding.  “I just… I want to give you my phone number, if that’s okay?  In case you need me?”

Isak stared at him as though he was insane, his jaw dropping slightly, and Chris would have laughed if he didn’t feel so bad for this kid.

“I mean, look, you don’t need to do anything with it.  Just…”

“I have a girlfriend,” Isak said quietly.  “Just because you saw  _ that _ … at the party... it was a mistake.”

Chris blinked.  He thought back to the interaction he’d had with Isak so far, and he appraised this moment.  Yeah, it was easy to see why Isak had assumed he had some sort of romantic interest, but for once in Chris’s life there genuinely  _ was _ no sexual motive for wanting to be nice to someone he wasn’t directly related to.  He just… wanted to help.

_ What the fuck, Chris _ ?

“I’m not coming onto you, Isak,” Chris told him, trying to keep his tone playful.  “No offence but I’m swearing off first years.  Too much drama.”

“Like Eva?” Isak asked.  Chris shrugged.

“Yes, like Eva.”  He tried to crack a smile.  “I’m still bruised from where Jonas fucking snaked me on the stairs.”

Isak managed a small smile in return.  Chris searched his eyes for any sign of genuineness within them but saw nothing.

“Okay, well, I’m going to go.  But-”  He indicated to the next road over where his car was parked.  “You… you don’t need a lift home, do you?”

Isak looked to where he was pointing and bit his lip.

“I have to… I’m -” he stopped and shook his head, pointing vaguely behind him.  

Chris nodded.  “So do you want my number, or...?”

Isak pulled his phone out of his pocket and stared at the notifications for a moment, frowning.  Then he quickly unlocked it, brought up his contacts screen and added a new entry.

“Here, let me,” Chris said, taking the phone from him.  He typed the number in and then, before he could talk himself out of it, double tapped and swiped through until he got to Isak’s messages.  Isak tried to grab the phone off of him, letting out a noise of indignation, but Chris took a few steps back and held his hand out in order to keep Isak at a distance.

The messages were from some guy called Elias: he only needed to look at them for a moment to see this was the same guy from the other night.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” he exclaimed as he scanned through them.  “Isak, you need to tell someone about this.  This is straight up sexual harassment.  This isn’t fucking cool, man.”

Isak looked horrified at this suggestion.

“We’re… we kind of have a thing.”

“A  _ thing _ ?  Did you agree to this  _ thing _ ?”

Isak looked at him in confusion.  “Of course.”

“You….  _ like  _ this?  Him texting and saying this stuff to you?”

“Yes,” Isak said, a little more certainly.  He held his hand out.  “I need my phone back, Chris.”

Chris sighed and handed it over.  He’d achieved nothing by doing this, other than making himself angrier, and Isak more defensive and less likely to trust him.

“You know,” Chris said, “I’m aware of my  _ reputation _ .  And I like it.  I like encouraging it.  But if I texted a girl with that sort of stuff, I’d be fucking ashamed of myself.  If one of the other Penetrators texted someone with that kind of shit, they’d be kicked out, I swear to God.  There are some things you don’t  _ say _ .  Ever.”

_ Like telling someone they fucked up and you’re going to tell everyone what a slut they are.  Like telling them how much you want to fuck them in the very next message. _

Isak stuffed his phone in his pocket and turned away from him.  Chris watched him leave, the words of the messages still searing through his brain.

 

****

 

He almost approached Jonas about it the next day.  But as soon as he got close, Jonas glared at him and walked away in the opposite direction and he stopped himself.  Jonas hated him: he didn’t want Chris telling him to take better care of his best friend.

So Chris once again found himself keeping secrets for a boy who he barely knew, who barely knew him in return.  It annoyed him a bit: this weird sense of responsibility he felt to do  _ something _ , though he had no idea what, with a boy who didn’t want that help.

Life went on pretty regularly for a while, though Isak was never far from his mind, and Chris still found himself scanning the common areas of the school each day to check that Isak was in attendance, at least, if nothing else.  Most days he was, though he seemed to have more time off than most, which bugged Chris a little bit.

Sometimes, though, Isak actually texted him.  Nothing meaningful, just the odd ‘How are you?’, or some lame meme, which sometimes Chris responded to and sometimes he didn’t.  Despite giving Isak his number, he still felt a grudging reluctance at getting  _ too _ involved with Isak’s life.  And the more time he spent away from him, the more he figured Isak was actually fine and he was just being paranoid.

Like one evening, he was busy fucking some chick at a party and he looked over to see a text had come through from Isak.   _ Are you busy?  _ it read.  He rolled over onto his back, pulled her onto his face, and began to eat her out.  The text went unreplied to.

A few days later - and over a month after the party he’d first spoken to Isak  - he was sitting watching TV with Ida at the very same house he’d first attempted to hook up with her, his hand down her top as he cupped one of her breasts.  He was doing his best to focus on the screen, or on Ida, but instead his mind just kept coming back to Isak, which wasn’t exactly ideal.

He’d seen the younger boy earlier in the day, during a rare moment when Isak was completely off-guard.  He’d been heading into the boys’ toilets as Chris had been coming out, his eyes scanning his phone screen.  Chris attempted to say something when he saw him, but Isak took one terrified look at him and rushed past him, heading into a cubicle.

It had unsettled Chris, and he found himself texting Isak back, feeling a guilty at seeing that last text he hadn’t got round to responding to.  Just a simple  _ Is everything ok?  _ He didn’t expect to hear a reply but at least he’d  _ tried. _

A few minutes later his phone vibrated and he looked down to see a message in response.   _ Are you friends with this kid? He needs someone to come pick him up.   _

Chris frowned, realising Isak hadn’t sent the message himself.  He unhooked his hand from Ida’s top as she looked across at him with a pout on her lips.  He pressed a kiss to them and then looked back at his screen, wondering how to respond.  A thousand possibilities filled his mind as to why someone else was texting on Isak’s phone.  None of those possibilities were good.

_ Yeah. Who is this & where are you? _

He waited for the next message to come through.   _ Score on Kristian IV. Gay bar.  _

Okay.  Okay, he was going to stay calm.  He looked at Ida and forced a smile as she raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’m… I need to head out for an hour.  But I’ll be back.”

She looked at him incredulously.  

“I’m sorry, it’s urgent.  Russ stuff.  I’m coming back, baby.”

“You better,” she said, the annoyance clear in her voice.  “I’m starting to take this personally.”

He wondered what she’d do if she knew he was blowing her off a second time for a boy in the first year.  Probably hit him.  And maybe he deserved it.  Here he was dropping everything for a kid he barely spoke to.  His friends would most likely insist he saw a doctor if they found out about this.

He leaned forward to kiss Ida but she turned her face to the side and he had to settle for her cheek.

“I’ll be back,” he said again.  “I promise.”

 

***

 

By the time he’d driven to the city centre, found a parking space, located  _ Score _ and headed in, he’d scared himself with every possible scenario of what could have happened to Isak.  He tried to work out why someone was texting from Isak’s phone, and why an angel-faced sixteen year old thought it was a good idea to be hanging out in a gay bar so notorious that even Chris refused to go in there (and yeah, he liked going to gay bars with girls: it was a double win as far as he was concerned - the girls always thought he was completely  _ woke _ for agreeing to it and he kind of enjoyed the ego boost of being checked out constantly.)

Gay bars weren’t a good place for a vulnerable kid like Isak right now, though.  He knew that much.

He sent another message as he was walking from his parking spot to the bar: _Where are you?_ _Is Isak still there?_  But the message went unseen for the few minutes he was walking and he finally gave up, shoving his phone back into his pocket. 

He paid an extortionate amount to get in and scanned the bar for the familiar blonde hair.  He did a quick sweep of the room, pushing past men who were already looking him up and down like so much fresh meat.  Normally he’d have enjoyed it, because he was basically a textbook narcissist, but right now all he could think about was a kid like Isak in a place like this and  _ fuck _ , he had to find him.

But he wasn’t on the first floor and so Chris sprinted up the stairs to the smaller second floor.  There were toilets up here and a quieter bar area; he scanned the latter for a moment and, not seeing Isak here either, headed for the toilets.

There were a few guys at the urinals, and the sound of someone throwing up in one of the cubicles.  He headed towards it and peered through the unlocked door to see Isak on his knees, a guy beside him with his hand rubbing between his shoulder blades encouragingly as Isak retched into the toilet bowl.

“Hey,” he said, and the man looked up at him while Isak groaned pitifully.  The boy stayed on his knees while the older man stood up to face Chris.

“You’re the guy I texted?  Chris?”

Chris nodded.

“Thank fuck for that.  Taking care of jailbait was  _ not _ on my agenda for the evening.”  The man’s face formed a soft frown; he was tall and slim and dressed in a white t-shirt and leather look disco pants that were eye-wateringly tight.  “I tried to tell him to leave but he was already pretty much out of it.”

“Has anything happened to him?”

“You mean has anyone touched him?  No.  They were like wolves circling when he came in, though.  It was lucky I got to him first.  He told me he downed a load of vodka before coming.”  The man screwed his nose up in disdain.  “The bouncers here are trash, they’ll let in any twink with a pretty face.”

“Right,” Chris said, looking to Isak who was still throwing up liquid vomit into the bowl.  “Um, thanks, man.”

“Between you and me, your friend… boyfriend… whatever he is… seems in a pretty bad place right now.”

Chris nodded, and the man glanced back expressively at Isak before leaving them to it.

_ Anyone could have texted him before me _ , Chris realised.   _ That Elias guy could have… and he could be the one standing here now. _

The realisation brought out the protective side he was was only just learning he had.

“Isak,” Chris said, kneeling beside him.  Isak looked at him dully, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth, “Are you done?  Or is more coming?”

“I don’t know,” Isak said throatily.

“Okay, well, let’s wait it out.”

Isak looked at him for the first time, as if seeing him properly.  “Chris,” he exclaimed, somewhat happily.  He even managed a smile.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Chris said, sighing.  “Aren’t you lucky?”

 

***

 

By the time he’d got Isak out of the bar, down the street to his car and strapped in safely, Isak had decided to fall asleep.  He tried to shake him awake to ask him where he lived but Isak’s head just lolled against the window and the boy let out a small whine.

“Fuck,” Chris said under his breath.  He had no idea where he was supposed to be driving him and he couldn’t very well message the likes of Eva or Jonas to ask; they’d be horrified to know he was with Chris right now.  “Isak, Isak, wake up! I need to take you home,” he said, raising his voice slightly.

“Don’t… wanna…” Isak said under his breath.  

Right.  Of course he didn’t.  He probably had some authoritarian father who would hit the roof if he turned up like this.

Chris debated his options but really there was only one: he would need to take Isak home with him.  He checked his phone - a couple of messages from Ida - and shook his head.  Right.  He was really going to have to do this.

“You owe me, kid,” he told Isak as he pulled out.  “I don’t take  _ anyone  _ back to my house.  Not even the ones I want to fuck.”

Isak continued to sleep, his face ridiculously innocent considering he’d been throwing up in a seedy gay bar just fifteen minutes earlier.

“Fucking hell,” Chris cursed.  ISak had ruined his plans again.  And Chris realised that he barely even gave a shit.

 

***

 

He ended up carrying Isak into the house, somehow; the kid was lighter than he looked under the layers he was wrapped up in - and he already looked pretty light - but Chris had never been the largest of guys (in some respects, anyway…) and he ended up hitting Isak’s head a couple of times as he awkwardly maneuvered him through doorframes until they ended up in Chris’s bedroom.  Chris dropped him on the bed, panting slightly, and Isak curled onto his side and continued to sleep.

Well,  _ perfect _ .

Chris would normally have shoved Isak over and shared the bed with him; he had no compunction about sharing beds with his guy friends when the situation called for it.  But something stopped him; he thought about how Isak had been each and every time Chris had tried to touch him when he wasn’t expecting it and he decided it just wasn’t worth the risk.

He sighed deeply.  He took Isak’s shoes off of him and covered him with the duvet.  He went through to the en suite and filled up a large glass of water for Isak when he woke up, and he placed this on the bedside table.  

Then he stripped down to his boxers, grabbed some some pillows and a blanket from the wardrobe, and tried to will himself to sleep.  

His heart had been beating quickly for ages now, and as it started to slow down he realised the feeling inside of him was relief.

 

***

 

When Chris woke up, it was still dark outside and he was in his bed, a little way over from Isak.  He groaned inwardly; he often did things in his sleep without realising it, like texting stupid shit to whatever girl he was interested in at the time, or getting up to brush his teeth or, in this case, crawling back into the comfort of his bed despite there already being someone in it. 

His rolled over to check his phone for the time.  It had just gone 5.30am.  There were several texts from Ida at this point: he felt some guilt when he realised he’d forgotten to text her back last night, but not enough to do it right this minute.

He turned over, trying to get back to sleep, but he paused when he heard Isak trying to hold back a choked sob.  It pierced the air between them, impossible to ignore, and Chris propped himself up on his arms and peered over.  He could see Isak’s back, hunched over as he attempted to make himself as small as possible, his shoulders shaking as he sobbed in otherwise silence.

“Isak?” he asked carefully.  He watched as the boy brought an arm up to his face, wiping it across his eyes.  “Are you… is everything okay?”

“Where am I?” Isak asked in a tiny voice, not looking at Chris.  Chris realised he was terrified to ask.  In Isak’s hazy, hungover condition, he could have been in any guy’s house right now.  The realisation made Chris feel like the literal worst, even though he knew he hadn’t done anything worse than climb into the warm bed with him.

“You’re at mine.  Penetrator Chris?  Remember?”  He felt silly saying his name but he didn’t know how much Isak remembered and the kid was refusing to look at him.  “I brought you here last night after… you threw up in that bar.”

“Did I… did I do anything?” Isak asked, still not looking.

“Other than get ridiculously drunk?  Nothing I saw.  There was a guy looking after you; he seemed pretty decent.  He was the one who contacted me.”

“Why you?” Isak asked, confused.

“I guess I was the last person who messaged you.”

“But why did you come?”

Chris shrugged, though Isak couldn’t see him.  “Because someone had to take care of you.”   _ And nobody seems to be doing a very good job of that right now _ , he added silently.

“Did we…?” Isak trailed off and Chris let out a short laugh.

“Isak, I’m not gay.  I just like sleeping in my bed, that’s all.”

Isak fell silent, hopefully reassured somewhat.  Chris tried not to feel too bad about all of this.  He wasn’t sure how he could have handled it any other way.

 

***

 

He stayed awake until Isak had fallen back asleep, and then he dozed off himself for a couple of hours, well aware that they both had school to get up for.  He wasn’t sure if Isak would make it in, considering his condition last night.  But when he heaved himself out of bed just after 8am, Isak was already sitting up, drinking the water Chris had given him and looking far better than anyone who had drunk that much vodka last night had any right to.

“Do you -” Chris started, rubbing his eyes as he cleared his throat, “Do you want me to take you home or to school?”

“School, I guess.”

“Great.”  Chris stood up.  “There’s an en suite bathroom through there.  I’ll use the main one.”

“En suite?” Isak repeated.  “Wow.”  Chris listened for a hint of sarcasm but didn’t hear it.  He walked over to the fresh laundry pile his mum had put in his room recently and chucked a towel at Isak.  

“You can steal one of my t-shirts or whatever if you need to change.  No offence but you kind of smell of vomit right now.”

Isak looked down at his lap, his expression unreadable.  “Thanks.”

 

***

 

Chris scrubbed hard at his body in the shower, trying to remove all traces of the bar from his memory.  He assumed Isak was doing the same.  The more he thought about it, though, the angrier he became; he didn’t understand why Isak had put himself in that situation, why he thought he deserved to be leered at by men who should know better.  He thought once again about that guy -  _ Elias _ \- and the way he’d spoken to Isak, the way he’d touched him, the texts he’d sent him.

Nobody knew.  Chris wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did.  Nobody could see what Isak was going through, except for Chris.  Once again he’d come to Isak’s rescue and all he could feel was anger at all the people in Isak’s life that were currently ignoring this aspect of him.

It shouldn’t have been down to a fuckboy like Chris to help this kid.

When he got to the bedroom, Isak was still in the bathroom.  Chris wandered around his room, pulling on clean underwear and jeans, before rifling through his drawers for a nice t-shirt.  He needed to look good today if he was going to make it up to Ida.

He looked up to see Isak coming out of the bathroom, already dressed in last night’s jeans and one of Chris’s t-shirts; Isak blushed when he saw him, as though he hadn’t been expecting anyone to be there.  He immediately looked down to the floor.  “Is… this one okay?  I just took the first one in the pile,” he explained.

“Sure,” Chris answered, pulling one on himself over his bare torso.  “You want a hoodie as well?”

Isak looked like he was about to say no when Chris threw an Adidas over to him.

“Thanks,” Isak said again.  Chris tried to smile at him to show him he wasn’t deliberately trying to be intimidating, but he’d learned pretty quickly that Isak didn’t really  _ do _ eye contact, at least not with him, and so the effort was wasted.

They finished getting ready and then headed out to Chris’s car.  It was a cold, dewy March morning and their breath misted up the windows as Chris drove them to Nissen.  

“So… can you remember much from last night?” Chris asked him.  Isak shook his head.

“Not really.”

“Were you drinking with friends before you got to  _ Score _ ?  Or alone?”

“Alone.”

Chris nodded.  It didn’t surprise him.  “Why did you go  _ there _ ?  I mean… it’s fine, I like gay bars myself.  But that one is a fucking dump.”

“You like gay bars?” Isak asked, surprised.  “But you’re not -”

“No, I know.  I go to them sometimes when I need a cool date idea.  Strictly as a tourist, you understand?”

Isak nodded like he did.  Chris didn’t point out that he’d never been to one on his own, and that maybe he’d be somewhat less of a tourist if he did.  The last thing Isak needed was some douchebag like him making him feel in some way guilty for being into men.

“Did you… were you feeling shit about something?” he tried again.  “Was that why you were drinking?”

Isak didn’t speak for a long time and Chris cleared his throat, slightly embarrassed about the question bombing.  But Isak finally said, “Yeah, there was some stuff… at home.”

“Okay.”

“My dad left a while ago and my mum is… she’s not coping so well.”

Chris nodded.  “My parents divorced a few years ago.  My sister didn’t deal with it at all.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  She… she gets panic attacks, like you.”

Isak looked across at him for the first time since they’d sat in the car.  “Like me?”

“You know, at Ida’s party?”  He glanced across at Isak.  “The panic attack?  I had to count with you and stuff?”

Isak blinked a few times.  “That’s what that was?  A panic attack?”

“Yeah?  Didn’t you know?”

Isak shook his head and Chris laughed, hoping it sounded kind.  This kid was something else.

“You’ve never had one of those before?  That was your first time?”

“No.  Well… no, sorry.  There was one other time.”

“Was it… related to that guy?”  

It was a guess, but the way Isak fell silent, he figured it was the right guess.

 

***

 

When he was in school - Isak walking several feet behind him and then disappearing with a small thank you as soon as they were on the grounds - he headed for his locker and saw Ida approaching from the other direction, her face like thunder.  He opened his arms, a charming smile on his face, and she literally slapped it off of him.

“Jesus, babe!”

“There was no  _ Russ _ thing last night, you dick.  I’ve just spoken to two of your arsehole friends and they knew nothing about it.”

“It was just with William!”

“One of those friends  _ was _ William!  Fuck you, Chris.”

She stormed away and he sighed, bringing a hand to his burning cheek..  Once again, he tried to understand why he’d chosen to wake up with some hot mess of a first year boy - who barely seemed to welcome his help - when he could have woken up with Ida instead.

There was no sexual motivation here.  His encounters with Isak felt like some secret romantic tryst without any of the romance and he wondered if it was even worth it.  But then he thought about Isak going through whatever it was he was dealing with on his own and his stomach twisted uncomfortably.  It wasn’t an option.

He plastered on a smile as Julian and William approached him from behind, pulling him forward as he downplayed the situation with Ida with an exasperated shrug.

 

***

 

He was walking down the corridor the following day when he saw Isak standing alone at his locker, pulling out books.  He quickly came over, not wanting to linger too long while there were other students about.  “Feeling better today?”

Isak looked at him, then down to the floor, and nodded.

“Need a lift home today?”

He didn’t know why he asked; he knew already that Isak would say no.

Except, Isak didn’t this time.  He glanced up at Chris shyly and then nodded.

Chris blinked at him, before his mouth curled into a smile.  “Great.  Meet you on the road we parked on yesterday.”

He pulled away as he saw Jonas approaching from the other end of the corridor; he passed by him about halfway down and Jonas barged into his shoulder on purpose.  Chris laughed scornfully.

“Is that the best you’ve got, eyebrows?”

Jonas started towards him and then shook his head; Chris turned round to see a teacher walking down the corridor.  They headed in opposite directions - Chris to his class and Jonas towards Isak.

He wondered how much more Jonas would hate him if he thought Chris was somehow trying to steal his best friend away from him as well.

 

***

 

He drove Isak home that night, and the one after that, and just like that it became a daily agreement that they never acknowledged.  Isak would climb into his car and Chris would take him home.  Sometimes they spoke, a lot of the time Isak seemed too lost in his own world to talk about anything at all.

One weekend, Chris was out at a party and decided to walk home alone, drunk out of his head; he was jumped by the Yakuza gang, kicked and beaten and generally made to look a lot less pretty than he was.  

Isak looked at him with wide eyes when he climbed into his car on the following Monday. His mouth dropped open in shock, and Chris just shrugged.

“You should have seen them.   _ Way  _ worse than me.”  A lie.  He hadn’t got the jump on  _ any _ of them.

“Them?  Who did it?”

“Yakuzas.”

“Isn’t that, like, a Japanese thing?”

“Yeah,” Chris said, smiling.  He turned off into the main road from the school.  “They think they’re cool, using that name.  None of them are Japanese.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.  They’re arseholes.  The Penetrators will take care of them sooner or later.  That’s why they did it in the first place.  They want a fight with us.  A proper one.”

He glanced at Isak’s worried face and tried to smile reassuringly.  “It’s fine, pretty boy.  You’re not in any danger from them.  They won’t touch a first year.”

“No, it isn’t that.  I just… I’m sorry, that’s all.  That’s a shitty thing to happen.”

This was the longest conversation Chris had ever had with Isak.  He indicated to turn left.  “I didn’t choose the thug life, the thug life chose me,” he said in English.

Isak laughed, loudly and genuinely, and Chris found himself smiling at the sound of it.  “What, you think that’s funny?”

“Sure.  You call  _ me _ pretty boy and then call yourself a thug.  You’re way prettier than I am.”

“I don’t know,” Chris said.  “I  _ guess _ you could give me a run for my money.”

“ _ Thug life _ ,” Isak repeated mockingly.  He continued to laugh as he looked out of the window.

After that, Chris made it his mission to make Isak laugh at least once on every car journey home.

 

***

 

He started to see some improvement in Isak’s demeanour after a while; at times he seemed more relaxed and almost happy around Chris, other times he was still wound as tight as a spring.  But at least he wasn’t  _ always _ like that now.

At school, he still saw Isak looking  _ fine _ : happy and smiling and relaxed, but Chris knew how much of a lie it still was.  Some time back, Isak and Sara had broken up, but Isak didn’t talk about it to Chris and it seemed to make no real difference to his mood, positive or negative.

One Monday afternoon, Isak climbed into the car with a pale, exhausted expression on his face.  Chris looked at him before setting off.

“Okay?”

“No,” Isak said, with uncharacteristic bluntness.  “My mum isn’t sleeping so well.”

“Shit.”

“She’s… she’s really bad at the moment.”  He looked fearful and Chris realised the younger boy didn’t want to go home.  It was written all over his face, but Chris wondered why he had decided to get a lift with him if that was the case.

He put his hands at the wheel and looked at Isak decisively.  “Let’s drive around for a bit today, yeah?”

Isak nodded quickly in agreement and Chris pulled out onto the road.

They listened to the stereo and cruised round Oslo with the windows down.  A couple of times Isak drifted off to sleep and then jolted himself awake.  Chris didn’t care either way; he was happy to just drive and block out everything.  Sometimes the world seemed too much, even for him - the most  _ extra _ person he knew - but when he was with Isak he felt almost like a different person.  Isak allowed him to be softer and quieter and secretly he kind of liked it.

It wasn’t as though he hated being Penetrator Chris, in fact he enjoyed it immensely when he was into it.  But that didn’t mean he wanted to be that person every moment of every day.

He headed up to the spot on the hills where William had once told him he took his dates and parked up.  It was approaching sunset, and the lights of the city below were beginning to flick on here and there.  They walked over to the bench, and sat and watched.

“It feels weird,” Isak said.  “Everything is so small down there.”

“Is that a euphemism?” Chris asked, nodding at Isak’s crotch area.  Isak rolled his eyes and whacked him on his shoulder.

“Douchebag.”

They sat in silence for a while until Chris felt compelled to break the spell, for no other reason than he was having a hard time working out what Isak was thinking.  “You know, a little known fact about me is I’m the best listener at Nissen.  Why else do you think the chicks always come back for more?”

Isak let out a small  _ hmm  _ noise.

“So if you do ever want to talk about something,” Chris continued carefully, “Anything at all… even something you feel was... I don’t know.... somehow your fault, I’m listening.”

He thought about Elias blaming Isak for his own depravity that night at the party, and Isak apologising.  Even now, that apology haunted him.

“It  _ was  _ my fault,” Isak said suddenly, and Chris nodded to show he was listening.  “You and your girlfriend breaking up.  Jonas hating you.  All of that was me.”

Chris blinked at him. He hadn’t been expecting  _ that _ .

“In what sense?”

“I told Iben that you’d cheated on her with Eva.  I was trying to break Eva and Jonas up.”

“Why?”

Isak shrugged.  “I’m a bad person.”

Chris thought about it.  About the gay bar, about the non-existent chemistry with Sara, about the awkward way Isak closed in on himself when Chris brushed against him sometimes.  He thought about the way Isak looked at Jonas.  He couldn’t bring himself to feel angry in any way.  Being a teenage closet case sounded like the most miserable experience in the world to someone like Chris, who flaunted his sexuality like a badge of honour.  

Not to mention that Isak had God knows what else to contend with: an absent father, a mentally ill mother, and an obscene stalker who thought it was okay to call him names like  _ slut face _ while convincing him he deserved it.

“You’re not a bad person. The only person who broke up me and Iben was me.  I’m the one who cheated, and not just once.  Multiple times.”

Isak looked at him, his face dropping: he’d clearly been bracing himself for a much harsher response.  He’d  _ wanted _ a much harsher response.

“We all make mistakes, Isak.  Try not to dwell on it.”

They fell into silence again and watched the sun set over the city.  Lights flickered on everywhere; they watched and ruminated and when Chris finally looked across, Isak was asleep, his head uncomfortably tilted against the back of the bench.

Chris pulled Isak gently towards him and let his head fall to rest in Chris’s lap.  He let the kid sleep.  He carded his hands through the soft blonde curls and hoped that when Isak slept, he didn’t dream too much of his shit life.  He hoped that something nicer was happening inside that pretty head of his.  

Fuck, he was going soft.

 

***

 

He drove Isak back home later that night.  He knew Isak didn’t want to go home, but when he offered him  the opportunity to crash at his, Isak just shook his head.  He still had a hard time accepting Chris’s help.

Chris pulled into the street outside Isak’s house and turned off the engine, wanting to say something else, to reassure Isak that he truly didn’t care about the Iben situation.  But before he could, Isak was looking at him, running his tongue over his dry lips.

“Do you…” Chris watched as the kid swallowed painfully.  “Do you  _ want _ … anything?”

Chris looked at him in confusion.

“I can, if you want.  I don’t mind.”

Chris continued to stare, realising what Isak was offering him, and Isak’s cheeks flushed at the expression that formed on Chris’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Isak said, unbuckling his seatbelt.  “Sorry.  I’m sorry.”

Chris felt disgust twist painfully inside of him; he tried not to screw his face up any further but he knew Isak had already seen it and he looked away angrily, trying not to give him the wrong impression.  The disgust was only at the fact that Isak had thought that about him - thought him capable of  _ doing _ that to him - but he didn’t know how to explain it in that moment and so he just swore.

“What the  _ fuck _ , Isak?”

“I’m sorry,” Isak said again.  “I just thought -”

“You thought that because someone is halfway decent to you, they expect something in return?  Something you clearly don’t even want?   _ Fuck _ .”

Isak fumbled for the release on the door.  “I was stupid.  I didn’t mean-”

He was crying.  Chris tried to stop him from getting out of the car, but Isak shrank from his touch, released the door fully and stumbled out from the seat.  He closed the door behind him, and Chris stared after him as he walked up to his house, wiping his eyes.  

He was tempted to get out and try and catch Isak up but he didn’t want to create a scene so close to Isak’s home, and he wasn’t even sure what there was to say.

So he just sat there and simmered with anger and tried to work out what had just happened.

He slammed his hands against the steering wheel and swore violently at himself, at Elias, at a fucked up world which allowed someone like Isak to think he was worth nothing more than a sexual transaction.

He drove home and sent a message to Isak.   _ I’m sorry _ .

But Isak, of course, didn’t reply.

 

***

 

Isak was in school the next day but Chris only saw him once, rushing from the school grounds as soon as the day was over without stopping to look for Chris.  The next day he was away completely.  

Chris tried not to worry, but he couldn’t help himself; he didn’t want to think of Isak home with his mum, obsessing over the misunderstanding in the car and thinking Chris hated him.  He vowed to talk to him the next time he was back in school, even if it meant doing it in front of the likes of Jonas or the other Penetrators.  Fuck them all.  Isak’s happiness was more important.

When he saw Isak on Thursday morning, Isak made a quick ‘call me’ signal which was unusual for him, and he wondered whether he’d been wrong to assume Isak was affected by what had happened.  He tilted his head to the building and walked in, through to the empty boiler room which the caretaker often left unlocked.  Isak came in seconds after him.

“Are you okay?” Chris asked.  Isak looked at him, still exhausted, and shook his head.

“Your mum?”

He shook his head again.

“Jonas was jumped on Tuesday.  By the Yakuzas.”  He looked sick to his stomach.  “You said they wouldn’t go after first years but they did.  They went after him.”  

Isak pressed a trembling hand to his mouth and started to cry, and Chris pulled him into a hug before he could stop himself.

“He’s so angry right now and I don’t know what to do with him, I don’t know how to help him.”  Isak sobbed into Chris’s chest.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know who else to go to.”

Chris couldn’t help but feel guilty.  He’d persuaded William not to go after the Yakuzas until after their exams because he thought that had been the responsible thing to do.  Now some innocent first year - and as much Chris didn’t like Jonas, he  _ was _ innocent - had been beaten up as well and Isak was standing here utterly distraught as a result.

“It’s okay, baby,” he told him.  The name dropped from his mouth without thinking about it; he’d meant it purely in comfort but he felt Isak tense up at the perceived implication of it and he mentally kicked himself.  He pulled away, though he knew Isak still needed the comfort of a hug, and put his hands on Isak’s shoulders instead.   “We’ll do something about this,” he promised him.  “This isn’t going to happen again.”

He started to imagine what they’d have done to Isak if he’d been with Jonas.  When they’d beaten up Chris they’d taken great delight in aiming for his face, telling him they were going to make him ugly.  

This had to stop.  And if it in some way made up for the way he’d acted toward Isak in the car the other night, the way he’d made him feel worthless because of a stupid misunderstanding, then all the better.  It was the least he could do.

 

***

 

He almost put his foot down, though, when Isak informed him a few days later that he and Jonas were going to be in the fight as well.  Jonas, he didn’t really give a shit about, but something about the combination of Isak’s innocence and the ugliness of the Yakuzas’ methods didn’t sit right with him and he argued with Isak about it until Isak pleaded with him with tears in his eyes.

Behind his pleas was a pressure that Chris quickly worked out for himself: Jonas wanted to be there and so Isak wanted to be there.

Finally, he said begrudgingly, “You can come but you stay on the fucking outside and don’t turn your back on any of them.”

“We have to actually arrange the fight,” Isak reminded him quietly.  They were sitting in Chris’s car discussing this; it was the first time Isak had been in it since the…  _ misunderstanding _ .  “How does that work?”

“There’s normally a middle man who arranges it.”

“Really?” Isak looked across at him.  His anger and upset over what had happened to Jonas had given him a determination Chris had never seen before and while he was relieved to see anything other than the listlessness and passivity that normally dictated Isak’s moods, he also felt a little worried about the frayed quality to his voice, the pressure he’d put himself under in order to make this better for Jonas.  He clearly wasn’t sleeping still, and Chris wondered whether that was down to his mum or down to the worry he was driving himself sick with over Jonas.  Maybe it was both.

“Just someone to approach both gangs and arrange the date and time,” Chris clarified.

“I can do that.”

Chris laughed, and shook his head definitely.“No.  You’re not going near them.”

“Do I need to?  Are any of them on Insta?  I’m kind of famous on there, you know?”  He looked across with a rare grin on his face.

“I know,  _ isakyaki _ .”  Chris smiled back.  “That actually isn’t a bad idea.” 

“Exactly.  They’ll see I’m Japanese and they’ll trust me.  It will be fine.”

Chris’s smile widened, and he followed it with a permissive nod.  “Okay.  I’ll find out and text you tonight.”

 

***

 

So Isak arranged the fight and Chris pretended to be okay with him talking about it each day as they drove home.  But honestly, Isak’s mood was starting to alarm him: he’d gone from hardly ever speaking to putting every inch of his energy into discussing each mundane detail of when the fight would happen, where it would happen, who it would happen with... 

Chris had never seen him like this, and they’d spent plenty of time together over the past few months.  A creeping feeling started to grow inside of him: he understood friendship, he knew that he’d take a bullet for William (provided that bullet didn’t kill him, obviously), but he felt as though Isak’s need to absolve himself of guilt for what had happened to Jonas was pretty much wrecking the kid’s self-esteem right now.

A couple of days before the fight, he just came out and said what he’d been thinking: “Why are you putting so much pressure on yourself over this?  You know it’s not your job to take responsibility for Jonas?”

Isak stopped talking and looked at him, a shocked expression on his face.

“I never said it was!”

“But that’s why you’re doing this?  You blame yourself?”

Isak shook his head but Chris knew he was lying.

“Were you there or something, when it happened?  Did he take the hit for you?  Is that why you’re feeling this way?”

“No,” Isak said.  “I wasn’t there.”  The  _ But I should have been _ went unsaid.

“You know, when I got beat up, William just sort of grunted at me and vaguely talked about beating up the Yakuzas when we had more time.  Sometimes bad shit happens to people you care about, but it’s not your job to… I don’t know… fucking  _ internalise _ it and make yourself feel guilty.”

“It’s different for me and Jonas,” Isak replied.  The  _ I love him _ went unsaid.  So much went unsaid with Isak.

“I hope he realises what a good friend you are to him,” Chris said.  He pulled the car into the curb outside Isak’s house and looked across at him.  “Are things better with your mum?”

Isak shook his head.

“You know, you  _ can _ always stay at mine.  I know that the last time I said that…. things got a bit weird.  But it wasn’t some sort of  _ deal _ , okay?  I wasn’t expecting anything in return.  I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Isak looked at him with a soft expression on his face; sometimes he looked at Chris like this, in a way that was so open and honest that it honestly destroyed Chris a little bit inside.

“I don’t understand why you’re always so nice to me.”

Chris shrugged.  “I always wanted a little brother.”  He smiled sheepishly.  “Fuck, that was corny.”

Isak laughed, quietly but genuinely.  “Okay.  I’ll… I’ll think about it.  I’ll let you know if things get worse.”

“You promise?”

Isak nodded.  “I promise.”

 

***

 

Isak called him the night of the bus party.  It was one of two potential nights that they’d talked about.  Chris was making out with Eva when he got it; he pulled away reluctantly because  _ fuck _ , he’d forgotten how good she was at kissing, and answered the phone.  She looked at him incredulously as he pulled away, her eyes darting down to the phone screen.

“It’s happening.  They’re outside,” Isak said, his voice breathless.  He could hear Jonas yelling something in the background.  “We’re on our way now.”

Chris hung up and looked at Eva, who was looking at him in return with an odd expression on her face.

“We’ve gotta go, baby.  Emergency.  Sorry.”

He caught Knut by his overall sleeve on his way out.  “They’re here.  Go tell William.  Tell everyone.”

He was the first out of the bus.  The sun was low as the daylight hours drew to a close; he shielded his eyes as he looked over to the huddle of Yakuza boys.  Isak and Jonas were coming from the opposite direction. Jonas looking fucking  _ out _ of it, Isak beside him with a worried expression on his face as he tried to talk to him.   _ Fucking hell _ .  He’d hoped that Jonas would at least have had enough sense to keep Isak safe during this fight.  He looked at Isak and then at the Yakuzas and he felt something primal kick in.

Good.  That was what he needed to get through this.

The Penetrators started to flood from the bus, pulling him over and away from the girls who were following them out with confused expressions on their faces.  He felt his heart pounding as they all assembled in a frayed sort of huddle, the lead gang members in the middle, facing him and William.  They slung some insults back and forth.  Chris looked down to see a bottle in William’s hand and he braced himself, knowing what was about to happen.

And then it did.  The bottle broke into pieces over the Yakuza leader’s head and after that there was only fighting and noise and chaos.  Chris took a few punches, gave a few more, then noticed Isak, who until that point had gone unnoticed, being approached by a much larger Yakuza member with an ugly, predatory expression on his face.

Chris’s heart sank and he pushed blindly out of the way to get to them.  He grabbed the guy by the collar and pulled him back, creating enough distance between him and Isak to push the Yakuza member to the ground from the front.

Every punch was a release of frustration at the way Isak had been treated in his life.  One for his dickhead father, one for his abusive mother, one for his best friend who seemed to expect everything and gave nothing in return. One for the sexuality that Isak needed to hide, and the rest for Elias, for everything Elias had done to Isak that Chris had both seen and hadn’t seen.

By the time he finished punching, the fight was over and the guy’s head slumped back.  Chris pulled away and spat at him.

He turned to see Isak looking obscenely pale, his face drained of colour.  He looked down, upset with himself for letting Isak be a part of this world.  On the floor beneath his feet, the fragments of the glass bottle glittered in the low sun and he saw Isak reflected in it.  

He looked back up to see the kid fall to his knees and he tried to get to him but then Jonas was pushing past him, a furious expression on his face.

“It’s fine, I’ll take care of him,” he said meaningfully, and Chris had to bite his tongue.

He recognised that Isak was about to have a panic attack but he visibly seemed to pull himself out of it: Chris couldn’t comprehend the sheer force of will it must have taken for him to do so.  He watched Jonas pull the blonde boy up and sling his arm around his shoulder.  Both of them staggered away and Chris tried to focus on what was around him.

“We have to go,” William told him urgently.  “Before the police arrive.”

Chris nodded.  The girls were gone, there was blood on the floor, and a sick feeling in his stomach.

The party was over.

 

***

 

Chris used to tell himself that when he grew up, he’d become a better person.  He wouldn’t fuck around like he did now: making girls cry, ignoring William’s calls from England because he still hadn’t forgiven him for leaving, serenading Eva from outside her bedroom window at 3.15am while she woke up beside another girl.

Sometimes, though, he remembered how things were with Isak and he felt a moment of self-reassurance that maybe he wasn’t just a shit person defined by the bad decisions he’d made.  He knew those months with Isak, however fleeting, were proof that he did have the capacity to care purely and selflessly about someone else’s well being.

Not that it made the end of their friendship any less painful, or any less abrupt an event than the start of it.

After the fight he had stayed at William’s while they’d attempted to self-medicate their injuries.  He’d drunk too much that night, and the night after, trying to push down the fear he felt for Isak: irrational, unproductive fear that he needed to help him and he had no idea how.

He texted him a few times and got no response.  He didn’t see him until they were back in school the next week.  The look that he associated with Isak when he was with his friends - that empty hollow glassiness behind his hazel eyes - was back, and it seemed even more obvious now than it did before.

_ How does Jonas not notice it _ , he wanted to scream.

The Penetrators were discussing the fight when he sat down with them for lunch.  There was some worry about it potentially having been filmed but at the moment they’d had no confirmation.  So they went over the rest of it; how many Yakuza they’d managed to floor, what their collective injuries were.  The usual shit.

At one point, Seb fixed Chris with an amused expression.  “I was meaning to ask.  Why were you defending that little blonde fag?”

“Huh?”

“Seriously, you were like a man fucking  _ possessed _ when that big guy tried to get him.”

“I -”  He looked at the faces of his friends and saw a couple of them nodding in agreement.

“Are you fucking him?” Seb continued.  “Is that why you let him in on the fight?”

“Shut up,” William told Seb warningly.  “Who the fuck cares if he is, anyway?”

“I’m  _ not _ ,” Chris clarified.  “I just didn’t want him... fucking  _ crying  _ and making us look bad.  That’s why I pulled the guy off of him.”

He felt sick with himself as he said it.  He had  _ no _ reason not to be honest about his friendship with Isak.  None at all.  

But then, that wasn’t true.  Penetrator Chris wasn’t a good person, he was a fucking  _ Penetrator.   _ According to his friends, he could fuck this kid, but he couldn’t care for him.  And that was the problem, wasn’t it?  That was how Isak saw himself, and he’d learnt that from guys like Seb.  Guys that Chris was friends with.

He finished his lunch and then watched as Isak crossed over from the canteen, heading towards the toilets.  He checked his friends’ expressions to see if they’d noticed him, but they were too wrapped up in their conversation. He stood up, muttered  _ See ya _ , and followed Isak into the empty bathroom.

“Hey,” he said when he got there.  Isak was stood at the sinks looking at himself in the mirror.  He turned to face Chris with a surprised expression on his face.

“Hi,” the younger boy said back.

“Crazy fight, huh?  Were you and Jonas okay?”

“Yeah.”  Isak fiddled with his rucksack strap as he looked down to the floor.  “Thank you.  For everything.  For your help with that.”

“And your mum?  Is everything okay there?” 

The last time they’d spoken about Isak’s mum, Isak had promised to think about staying at Chris’s place for a while.  Now, though, Isak just smiled at him like he wasn’t even sure why he was asking.  

The smile didn’t meet his eyes.

“Things are fine, Chris.”

“Oh.”

“I, um…” Isak gestured towards a cubicle.  “I have to go.”

“So, that’s it?” Chris asked him as Isak turned.  Isak paused, then looked back towards him.  “You just wanted my help with the Yakuzas and now that’s done we’ll go back to pretending we’re not friends?”

Isak squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath.  Then he opened them and fixed Chris with a determined expression.

“We’re not friends.  You don’t want me as a friend.”

“Why not?”

“Because.  It’s obvious, isn’t it?  You want a friend that’s normal, and who you can trust.  Not someone who is going to act like a slut around you.”

The words sounded hollow and mechanical.  Chris reeled from them, feeling disgusted at how someone as sweet-natured and innocent as Isak could even comprehend saying such a thing.

“Who told you that?  Was it that guy?  Elias?”

Isak wavered for a moment.  “Nobody told me.  I just know.  It’s best if you stay away from me now.”  He blinked away tears.  “I don’t want to be a slut and I know I will if we keep spending time together.”

“Who talked to you like this?   _ Tell me _ , Isak!”

Chris started towards him, wanting to pull Isak close to him and tell him how wrong he was.  But Isak took a few steps back, his eyes frantic with worry.  He was a wounded animal again, and Chris felt something dark and ugly inside of him; he wanted to hurt anyone who had ever spoken to Isak and made him feel this way. 

Chris suddenly turned, punching the mirror above and feeling it shatter against his hand.  His knuckles split and blood began to trickle down from it, he pulled away with a sharp gasp and turned to look at Isak, to apologise.

But Isak had already gone.

 

***

 

For a time, he only ever saw Isak from a distance; around the school, until Chris completed his exams and left, and then at the occasional party.  They didn’t speak about what he had done.  They didn’t speak about the time they’d spent together.  They didn’t speak at all.

Chris started seeing Eva more often in the run up to Christmas - they weren’t dating but sometimes he wished he could just get over his insecurities and fucking ask her out like a man would, and not an immature little graduate with no clue what he was doing with his life.

She talked about her friends and that inevitably meant she talked about Isak sometimes.  One day she told Chris he’d moved out of his mum’s house, that he was living with some gay guy called Eskild who used to live with Noora.  Another day she told him that Isak was acting strangely at school, and there were rumours spreading that he was gay (“But I always knew,” she told Chris. “In fact I thought he was dating  _ you _ at one point.”)  Then she spoke about how he’d become ‘official’ with some hot guy in the third year who had transferred in from Bakka.

At Christmas, Eva invited Chris to a party at Isak’s place.  He almost declined, knowing it wasn’t a  _ party party _ , wondering if it would make Isak feel uncomfortable to have him there.  But in the end his curiosity got the better of him and he accepted.  

Besides, he genuinely wanted to spend more time with Eva.  He’d kind of fallen for her, with her infectious laugh and messy drunken attitude and the way she pressed kisses into his shoulder when they fucked.

He drank glogg and hung fucking  _ decorations _ on the tree with Eva, and generally felt like an idiot.  And when he wasn’t doing that, he watched Isak’s new boyfriend - this  _ Even _ \- searching for some kind of hint that he wasn’t the good guy he made out to be.  But there was nothing.  If it was an act, it was a good one.

He filed the shovel talk he’d planned to the back of his mind and instead approached the two of them with a smile on his face.

“We haven’t spoken in ages,” he said to Isak.  They exchanged a quick handshake - something they’d never really bothered with in the past beyond the odd awkward car meeting - and then he smiled at Even and shook his hand as well.

“I’m Chris.”

“Penetrator Chris!” Even exclaimed excitedly.  “I’ve heard about you.”

“From Isak?”

Isak blushed but didn’t deny it.

“Not just Isak.  You guys were legends.”

“Well.  I’m sure the  _ Kosegruppe _ will continue our fine tradition of drinking from condoms and licking each other’s armpits,” Chris joked.  Even tilted his head back and laughed loudly and beside him Isak smiled.  He was a little taller than Chris now; he’d had a growth spurt at some point in the last few months, though he was still just as skinny.

He looked good.  He had the same pretty face and the same wide eyes that glimmered with inherent goodness even when they were hurting.  He’d got there without Chris’s help, and Chris only felt  _ slightly  _ bittersweet about that.

“We’ll try,” Even replied, and Chris looked across at Isak.

“Look after this one, okay?  He deserves to be happy.”

Even looked at him, and then at Isak, with a quizzical expression on his face and Chris just shrugged.

“See you around.”

He walked back over to the tree and knelt down beside Eva to kiss her.  “I’m going to head off, babe.”

She looked at him with an exaggerated pout.  “Already?”  She was fixing a bauble to the tree; it was a mirror ball that reflected every facet of the room around them.  He leant forward and took her face in his hands and pulled her in for a kiss.

“You’re getting romantic on me,” she said.  He rolled his eyes.

“Does that mean I can come round later and treat you dirty?”

She smiled.  “Maybe.”

He stood up, passing a pissed-off looking Jonas on the way; he smirked at him and Jonas scowled balefully before continuing to stare into the middle distance.

When he left, Even and Isak were settling into a chair.  Isak sat himself on Even’s lap as he brought his arms around his boyfriend’s neck.  For the first time, when he looked at Isak, he saw something that was undeniable: a genuine happiness and lightness of being in his wide hazel eyes that had been missing for so many months.

Chris had no idea if that happiness was fleeting or permanent, or whether Even was still attempting to piece Isak’s shattered spirit back together.  Maybe Isak had learnt how to do it himself.  He’d got through plenty already without Even, without Jonas, without Chris.  He’d done most of it himself.

As Chris was slipping his sneakers on in the corridor, bracing himself for the cold weather outside, Isak came out to speak to him.  Except, he didn’t speak at first.  He just pulled Chris into a hug and Chris gripped back, remembering the familiarity of this as though the business with the Yakuzas had been yesterday.

“I’m sorry,” Isak said, and Chris rolled his eyes, opening his mouth to chastise him for apologising, but Isak shook his head.   “No, I  _ am  _ sorry.  I had so much going on in my head back then and I know I hurt your feelings, ending it so suddenly.”

Chris shrugged.  “Well, it’s not like we were dating, baby.”  He started to pull away and before he could stop himself he pressed a kiss to Isak's forehead.  "Even though we'd have looked great together."

“Fuck you,” Isak said, grinning.

Chris sighed, his face turning serious.  “Just... tell me you’re okay?  Tell me that Even doesn’t make you feel worthless?”

“Even is amazing.  He’s smart and funny, and right now he makes me feel like I can do anything.  I’m better than okay.  I promise.”

“And that guy… does he still contact you?”

Isak shook his head.

“Good.  That’s really good.”

“Yeah.”  There was a short reflective pause between them and then Isak smiled deviously.  “I have a present for you.  Hold your hand out.  Close your eyes.”

Chris rolled his eyes but played along, making an exaggerated display of closing them.  He felt something cool and round being pressed into his hands.  He opened his eyes, looked down and saw the mirror ball he’d just hung on the tree.

“So you can see yourself a hundred times.   _ Pretty boy _ .”

Chris shoved Isak away with a good natured grin.

“You need to check your phone, by the way,” Isak said.  “When you’re outside.”

“Fine  See you around.  Oh, and tell me if this Even guy stops making you happy, so I can come and kick his arse, okay?”

Isak nodded, and headed back into the living room.

When Chris was outside the front door, he pulled his phone from his pocket and saw the Facebook notification.   _ Isak Valtersen has accepted your friend request. _

He grinned, shoved his phone in his pocket, and headed out to the next party.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Comments are more than welcome; I'd love to know your thoughts!
> 
> Come find me on Twitter @DiscoNight_01 or hit me up anon-style on CC: https://curiouscat.me/DiscoNight_01


End file.
